[Telegraph] Just as troubling as the suggestion of an Islamist conspiracy in Birmingham schools is the refusal of the local non-Islamic establishment to do anything about it
[DAWN] THE faith we Paks repose in judicial commissions would have been funny had it not been so pathetic. It's almost like an adult announcing his belief in djinns and fairies.
Consider: the universal reaction across the country after the recent murderous attack on Hamid Mir in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... was to demand -- you guessed it -- a judicial commission. The government promptly complied, and the chief justice nominated three judges for the task of investigating the shooting.
I have no doubt that all three judges are fine, upstanding members of their respective benches. But to expect them to actually determine who was behind the attack is a bit like waiting for Inspector Clouseau to morph into Sherlock Holmes.
Just to put things into perspective, when Saleem Shahzad, a brave investigative news hound, was kidnapped, tortured and killed in 2011, allegations about the ISI's involvement had surfaced. Following an uproar in the media, a judicial commission was set up under Justice Saqib Nisar.
After weeks of deliberations, the commission submitted its report on Jan 10, 2012. In the conclusion, it blamed "various belligerents in the war on terror which included the Pak state and non-state actors such as the Taliban and Al Qaeda and foreign actors".
There the matter has rested ever since to the best of my knowledge. Obviously, these vague findings hardly lend themselves to arrests and prosecution. And so it has always been. From Liaquat Ali Khan to Benazir Bhutto ... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in... , many politicians have been assassinated without the nation being any wiser about who was behind these killings. We still don't know who to honour for ridding us of Gen Zia.
If a PPP government couldn't find out who orchestrated Benazir Bhutto's murder during its five-year term, can we really expect a judicial commission to identify those behind the attack on Hamid Mir? But actually, Zardari's government didn't ever look as if this was a priority.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/27/2014 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[DAWN] A LITTLE discussed but crucial aspect of the government's dialogue with the banned TTP is the issue of faceless myrmidons of foreign origin who live or have found sanctuary in bad boy strongholds in Fata. As reported in this newspaper yesterday, the foreign bad boys, with an eye on the government-TTP dialogue, are keen to secure safe passage out of Pakistain and move on to other arenas of jihad, especially Syria.
But the principal concern here should hardly be what foreign faceless myrmidons living on Pak soil want. It should, instead, be how to devise a coherent strategy to nudge out foreign faceless myrmidons from Pak soil while simultaneously reducing their influence on the Pak militancy spectrum.
To begin with, what the government ought to demand is a full accounting of foreigners associated with militancy in Pakistain and living in the tribal areas. Given the long history of militancy in the region, there are a number of people from the time of the first Afghan jihad in the 1980s who, in their post-jihad career, settled down in Pakistain, married Paks and are living here having long abandoned militancy and violence. Those particular individuals are of little consequence today and pose no obvious threat to the state.
However, if you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning... there are other foreigners -- in the scores, hundreds, perhaps even a couple of thousand -- who live in Pakistain, are active in militancy and pose a very serious danger to this country and possibly other states too. Here the government will have to be more firm and insistent in its negotiations with the TTP. To begin with, the TTP must provide a comprehensive and verifiable list of active foreign faceless myrmidons living in Fata, both those living under the TTP's umbrella of protection and otherwise.
Next, the TTP must guarantee the disarming and decommissioning of the foreign bad boys. That has been one of the basic conditions of any peace deal that governments have struck with faceless myrmidons over the past decade and it would be disastrous to move away from that at this point.
After that, the question of safe passage can be taken up on a case-by-case basis, but only to allow foreigners to return to their home countries. For obvious reasons, most foreign faceless myrmidons may prefer to move to yet another country to continue their so-called jihad, but the government here must be careful to take into account the potential ramifications: does Pakistain want to be blamed for exporting its militancy problem to other parts of the globe? The worrying bit is that the government has been quiet on the issue of foreign bad boys.
The TTP is unlikely to easily cut ties with or abandon its allies among foreign bad boys, so the lack of clarity and purposefulness on the government's part may encourage the TTP to demand concessions even on this front. What exactly does the government have in mind here?
Posted by: Fred ||
04/27/2014 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
